“Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator”, by Roald Dahl, illustrated by Joseph Schindelman

 

202 pages, Alfred A. Knopf, ISBN-13: 978-0394924724

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator is Roald Dahl’s sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (reviewed last week) and continues the story of young Charlie Bucket and Willy Wonka as they travel in…the Great Glass Elevator. Originally published eight years after Chocolate Factory, Glass Elevator picks up with Charlie and family aboard the flying Great Glass Elevator after Willy Wonka has rewarded him with the ownership of his chocolate factory.

The Elevator accidentally goes into orbit and Wonka docks them at the “Space Hotel USA”. Their interception of the hotel is mistaken by approaching astronauts and hotel staff in a Commuter Capsule and listeners on Earth – including Nathanial Greene, the President of the United States – as an act of space piracy and they are variously accused of being enemy agents, spies and aliens. Shortly after their arrival, they discover that the hotel has been overrun by dangerous, shape-changing alien monsters known as The Vermicious Knids – sound familiar?! – who cannot resist showing off and revealing themselves by using the five hotel elevators (with one Knid in each of them) and spell out the word SCRAM, giving the group time to evacuate. As the group leaves, a Knid follows the Great Glass Elevator and tries to break it open, but to no avail, which results in the Knid receiving a bruise on its backside and hungering for payback.

I could go on…but I won’t. While Dahl’s two other books have stayed with me because of their inherent maniacal madness, Glass Elevator…hasn’t. Honestly, I had to look this thing up and read the synopsis before an inkling of the book reasserted itself in my memory. I guess because it just doesn’t have the emotive power of the previous books. As a work on its own merits it’s alright, but it seems to be trying too hard to recapture the madcap magic of its predecessor and, in so doing, fails all the more. It all feels rather as if Dahl is just going through the motions by putting his characters through one outlandish situation after another and introducing one outrageous character back-to-back; while all of this worked for whatever reason in James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, it just doesn’t here. The magic is gone and the crazy hijinks are all just puff and powder.

Ah, well, we still have two Dahl gems to cherish.